Posted on 02/13/2011 4:44:10 AM PST by IbJensen
I remember when I learned to enjoy reading, and it was whn we were assigned “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury. What an exciting thing to open up cpmpletely new worlds in your imagination? I then went week after week to the school library until I had read every Bradbury book they had...”R is for Rocket” “S is for Space” “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, all of them. After Bradbury I moved on to Asimov, Niven, and Heinlein and never looked back.
Kudos to the teacher who exposed me to science fiction.
I’ve always found it to be interesting that we’re able to recognize misspelled words and read over them as if nothing is wrong.
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Agreed, plus lack of punctuation AND the butchering of headlines etc.
One gets ‘tired’ of pointing them out and you also get labeled as being picky etc....
Sometimes it ‘hurts my eyes’ to read what is posted....
I learned to read by the phonics method, in the classroom and at home where my mother was a teacher and elementary principal who’d always taught the phonics method.
I’ve yet to read a description of the “whole language” approach that makes any sense. All it seems to be is memorization, or kids just learn to memorize “whole” words rather than being able to look at the letters and syllables that make up the word, and then pronounce and discern the meaning or new words, or use a dictionary.
Of course, once a kid has looked at the letters and syllables and learned a new word, I guess they read the words they’ve learned on a “whole word” basis afterward. But being able to look at the letters and syllables that make up a word seems like a far superior method of learning to read and spell, and to learn news words throughout life.
He meant 60 years ago in 1955.
This was a great article. I recall my parents had the book in the home when I was a child.
Thank you for posting this interesting and informative article.
The goal of almost every college professor is tenure - aka near absolute job security that continues until you want to retire. A family example is my Uncle who wrote a text book in the mid 1970s at age 40ish, gained tenure, and is still teaching at 72. Most, if not all of this is based on that 1976 era text book and its reprints.
To gain tenure you have to publish. This normally means text books. Since you have your textbook on the subject you are teaching all of your students have to buy your textbook. At 20-50 students a session, 2-3 sessions a year, this gets into some real money after a decade or three.
So what happens to this market logic if you don't come up with something new every generation or so?
There is no money or tenure in teaching something cast in concrete - see the collapse of the classical (Greek and Latin) based programs in our university systems along with the explosive growth in gender/racial based programs.
don’t schools get extra $$/grants/aid/tax money for “special” programs for kids? I’d say follow the money when it comes to schools...they probably have a certain percentage that they must reach in order to get more $$$$$ “for the children”.
Cincinnati Public Schools calendar...the February page says, “We Practice the 3 R’s...reduce, reuse, recycle”...children in photo holding a green globe. Wonder why Johnny can’t read? Our tax money is spent on these 3 R’s training them to be green nazis and the 4th R, feel good anytime about reproduction.
Americans...
As almost always, Donald Trump is Right on the money!
Schools has been used to create social illiterates for America. The result being now you do have an illiterate President among a flawed Congress.
The solution is simple, END FEDERAL SCHOOLING SYSTEM (DOE), and give parents the right to choose for their children.
Send all this commies under disguise teachers to serve gas stations!
I attended a Catholic school. We had alphabet letters with lower case and caps all the way around the room. Also had pictures, A is for apple, B is for banana etc. It was painless learning. Every afternoon the nun would read to us, usually from some children’s storybook...it made us want to read our own storybooks. It was joy to learn in that atmosphere. No stress, just enthusiasm and a desire to learn faster and read more. And so very simple.
bookmark
I started reading well before Kindergarten (1956) also. One day in class, one of the kids told me I couldn’t read. So I picked up a book and began reading to the other kids to prove I could read. The teacher saw me. Well, it ended up that my parents tried to get the school to let me “skip” a grade. I spent a lot of time reading to the principal, doing math, etc. Although I was learning at a higher level (I don’t know what level) they would not let me skip a grade simply because of my “age.” However, what they DID do, was call me in to read to the classes whenever the teachers had to leave the room for some reason. That happened all the way through the 6th grade. I would be asked to leave my classroom and go to another and read to the class. They actually used my skills for their benefit, but wouldn’t let me move forward because of my “age.”
I had a similar experience with my daughter back in the early 70s.
I/we had taught her to read prior to kindergarten.
We went to 'Meet the Teacher' night just before the start of my daughter entering kindergarten. I told the teacher, rather proudly, that Jeanette knew how to read. She jumped me with both barrels, accusing me of using the wrong method and my daughter woud be ruined for life.
That's when I knew gov. education was in the toilet.
My daughter was in honors classes throughout.
But even there the curriculum sucked.
My daughter would bring home papers in science , for instance, with poor capitalization, punctuation. But they were graded 'A'. When I pointed out the mistakes she told me in Science class punctuation, etc. was ignored. Only English class graded on it.
Then there was New Math. Another totally worthless endeavor.
One of the problems is these 'educators' trying to justify their jobs by thinking up new ways to teach.
Then there's discipline, no family unit, uneducated parents. The list is long but the first step is Get rid of the Dept. of Education.
It's pretty simple stuff and the best way for kids to learn how to read. This "historical context of words" bullsh*t that these wacko teachers spout is EXACTLY why Johnny not only can't read but has absolutely no interest in doing so.
How DARE you!!! Just who do you think you are? ;-)
I have another thought to share...
If Americans can´t read, they ought to relay on TV or Films for information, and this is the COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA PARADISE!
When I was eight, I was rounded up by one of the staff at my hometown's Carnegie Public Library and "charged with:
1. leaving the juvenile section that occupied the basement
2. having the nerve to try and check out William L. Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"
3. thwarting an impromptu "literacy test" by reading a line from the book at random.
It took the intervention of my mother (who had taught me to read phonetically despite her being a teacher in the public schools) to eventually obtain the book, and the woman at the desk was adamant that it would be checked out to my mom and NOT to me.
The episode did little more than confuse me, but it outraged mater.
Mr. niteowl77
As for me, I don't remember whether I learned by phonics or the look-say method. The school taught phonics-phonics-phonics, but I could read before first grade. Math had way too many of the new math "set theory" topics, but I do remember lots of addition and multiplication drills.
>>”-six years ago, in 1955 to be exact”
>
>Apparently he can’t do math either...
>
Really? You can’t extrapolate from the hyphen in front of the word “six”? I find that interesting.
I have not had that particular experience but have had similar ones where it seems you are talking to a machine that is programmed to stay quiet and calm until you finish speaking and then repeat the same phrase over and over. It truly is maddening. I have never understood how people can arrive at such a state.
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